Students ‘at‐risk’ policy: competing social and economic discourses

Within a context of global reform agendas that promote economic ideologies in education the discourses surrounding ‘school failure’ have shifted from ‘individual risk’ to ‘a nation at‐risk’. Enhancing the quality of schooling through improving educational outcomes and standards for all, and thereby reducing ‘school failure,’ is simultaneously constructed as enhancing both social justice and a nation’s economic advantage in the global marketplace. Within this broader context, this research explores the complexity of issues related to policy for students at educational risk through an analysis of the Education Department of Western Australia’s ‘Making the Difference: Students at Educational Risk Policy.’ This research adopted a theoretical framework of a ‘policy cycle’ (that allowed for an exploration of power relations within the policy process. Primarily, consideration is given to the competing social and economic discourses found within the policy text and subsequent tensions reflected and retracted throughout the policy process from macro (system), to meso (district) and finally to micro levels within the schools and classrooms.     

The School and the Reduction of Inequality∗

ABSTRACT

The need to develop reasoning skills in children through discussion is generally acknowledged by curriculum aims. There is, however, a lack of any definite teaching strategy to fulfil this need. Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children programme has had success in this area. As with other ‘collaborative enquiry‐based’ approaches to learning, it depends upon a teaching strategy which enhances children's self‐esteem. This seems a necessary ingredient for the development of rationality, critical awareness and autonomy in children. Inadequate teacher training is suggested as a major reason for the failure of ‘collaborative’ approaches greatly to influence educational practice. With a shift away from the ‘authority/knowledge‐based’ paradigm and the provision of effective teacher training, it is considered that our educational institutions could become more democratically organised, and we would move closer to realising the liberal ideal of developing human potential to the full.     

Self-Esteem And The Confidence To Fail

This paper takes a sideways look at the controversial topic of educational assessment, raising the question: what place should the success/failure distinction have in an effective and humane educational system? Though the experience of failure may undermine the self‐esteem that is conducive to learning, its possibility is clearly important educationally. Instead of asking whether teachers should be truthful about children’s achievements or dishonestly promote their self‐esteem, we need to recognise a certain logical indeterminacy about what young children can do. Given this, it is reasonable to presume in favour of many of their capacities rather than against them, for this is how children develop the confidence to act. This includes the confidence to fail as well as the confidence to succeed. It is argued that both are crucial for learning.     

Complicating ‘student behaviour’: exploring the discursive constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’

When educators consider ‘student behaviour’, they usually think about ‘problem behaviour’ such as disruption or defiance. This limited and limiting view of ‘student behaviour’ not only fails to acknowledge children as educational actors in a wider sense, but also narrowly positions educators as either in control or out of control of their classroom. Mainstream educational psychology’s responses to ‘challenging behaviour’ point educators to numerous ways to prevent its occurrence, through, for example, changing their disciplining approaches and techniques. However, much of the advice directed at improving student behaviour fails to interrogate the core notion of ‘student behaviour’ itself, as well as the conceptual baggage that it carries. The focus is squarely on eliminating ‘problem behaviour’ and often resorts to a pathologisation of students. Meanwhile, when considering ‘student behaviour’ through a Foucauldian post-structuralist optic, behaviour emerges as something highly complex – as spatialised, embodied action within/against governing discourses. In this opening up, it becomes both possible and critical to defamiliarise oneself with the categorisation of ‘challenging behaviour’ and to interrogate the discourses and subject positionings at play. In this paper, we pursue this task by asking: what happens with the notion of ‘behaviour’ if we change focus from ‘fixing problems’ to looking at the discursive constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’? What does it become possible to see, think, feel and do? In this exploration, we theorise ‘behaviour’ as learning and illustrate the constitution of ‘learner subjectivities’. Drawing on two case scenarios, we explore how children accomplish themselves as learners and how this accomplishment links the production of subjectivity and embodied action, and illustrate how ‘student/child behaviour’ appears significantly different to what mainstream educational psychology would have us see.     

Recent Developments in the Scottish Process of School Inspection

Scottish education has been going through a period of rapid educational change. This paper describes some of the approaches being adopted by HM Inspectorate of Schools both to hold the educational system accountable and to support its further development. It provides an account of the outcomes which are considered central to the inspection process, the ways in which inspections are subsequently followed up and the impact of the inspection process on schools. At the same time, the paper considers the strategies which have been pursued in recent years to create a ‘quality culture’ in Scottish education. These have included work on the features of ‘effective’ schools, the wider sharing of the criteria being used to inspect schools, the introduction and support of approaches to development planning and further work on potential performance indicators     

A pilot study of factors affecting the process of integration in Greek nursery schools

In the past ten years, the issue of inclusion has proved one of the biggest challenges facing special needs education planners and policy‐makers in developed countries. Greek educational policy has given emphasis on two points: (a) the development of new organizational structures (i.e. resource rooms, support teachers), and (b) the implementation of administrative regulations that enable mainstreaming special and ordinary education into a unified educational system (inclusion). In doing so, the content of the curriculum and the pedagogical characteristics of the educational environment were ignored. This paper reports the results of a pilot study that aimed to explore the pedagogical aspects of inclusion and integration as implemented in Greek nursery schools. More specifically, the study investigated the way special needs children participate in the learning process and their relationship with the other members of the classroom. The following hypothesis guided the study: the process of school integration of a special needs child is regulated by (a) the degree and the quality of his/her participation in the learning process, and (b) the pupil’s ability to comply with the main rules of the classroom. Data were gathered from two special needs children, their teachers and their parents through observations and interviews. Research findings seemed to reinforce the two criteria of the research hypothesis. As observation revealed, children’s actions diverged from the desired joint activity. According to research in social groups, this diversion influences the meaning classroom members attribute to ‘differences’ and causes a negative effect on children’s membership of the group. At the same time, the study points out crucial dimensions of the above criteria, particularly as regards the attitude of nursery teachers and of the other pupils towards children with special needs, an issue that needs to be further explored.     

Young people’s voices: disciplining young people’s participation in decision-making in special educational needs

In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children’s rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is flawed. The inclusion of young people’s voices in decision-making is context dependent, and influenced by individual relationships, both positive and negative. It is framed by policies that subjugate children within disciplinary technologies that determine a regime of ‘truth’ about effective and appropriate participation. Drawing on data gathered as part of a wider study on the relationships between services users and services providers in special educational needs, this paper demonstrates that active inclusion of the voice of the child can be illustrated to be at least variable, and at worst prejudiced. It is suggested that the notion of participation produces tacit forms of ‘government’ that further classify and divide young people, magnifying their marginalization.     

‘Wishing for dragon children’: ironies and contradictions in China’s education reform and the chinese diaspora’s disappointments with australian education

This paper argues that the re-traditionalisation of ‘wishing for dragon children’ creates difficulties for China’s current education reforms and informs the disquiet expressed by Chinese-Australians about Australian education. We develop this argument around three key propositions. First, we explore Confucianism and the civil service examination system in ancient China to situate the expectation of ‘wishing for dragon children’ historically. Second, we show that processes of re-traditionalisation exercise considerable vitality in modern China. They were used by Chinese Communist authorities for political control, and they now interrupt the de-traditionalising ‘Quality Education’ reforms. Third, we show that the re-traditionalisation of diasporic Chinese-Australians is evident in their negotiations with Australian education around their desires for ‘dragon children’. Parental ‘wishing for dragon children’ hinders or deflects China’s education reforms and subtly affects education in Australia. How to understand, judge and act on the problems of re-traditionalisation and de-traditionalisation remain significant concerns for educational research.     

The Professional Status of Educational Research: Professionalism and Developmentalism in Twenty-First-Century Working Life

‘How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?’ asked Donald McIntyre in his 1996 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. Still pertinent to consideration of the direction in which the British educational research community ought to focus its development, this question is revisited through examination of whether or not educational research is a profession. Located within a sociological framework, the paper first examines some of the earliest work that established the sociology of professions as a field of study. It then compares this with recent work in the field, before considering whether or not – against the various criteria for professional status that these studies identify – educational research(ing) may be categorised as a profession. Using Noordegraaf’s three categories, the case is examined for considering educational research(ing) as a ‘pure’, a ‘hybrid’ or a ‘situated’ profession. The conclusion is that it represents none of these, but that, within the context of twenty-first-century working life, this is less important than the need for educational research to embrace a culture of developmentalism.     

Why the Computer is not Dominating Schools: a failure of policy or a failure of practice?

Despite the hyperbole that has continually surrounded the area of educational computing, for the last 20 years the computer has noticeably failed to permeate the school setting. This has traditionally been attributed to a failure of educational practice to adapt to, and provide for, the educational ‘IT revolution’. However, this article argues that a wider critique of educational computing should be adopted if‐we are to really understand the apparent failure of computers to be integrated into the compulsory educational setting. By examining how educational computing has been, and continues to be, constructed in both educational policy and discourse, the article considers how this ‘writing’ of educational computing is fundamentally at odds with the structure of the school organisation it is meant to merge with     

Experiencing the same but differently: indigenous minority and immigrant children’s experiences in Cyprus

This paper examines the experiences of minority students from two different cultural groups, immigrant children of Pontian background and indigenous minority children of Roma descent, in the Greek-Cypriot educational system. Through a joint re-examination of results from two different qualitative studies, this paper delineates similarities and differences of how life at school is experienced through the eyes of children who are not part of the mainstream, in an effort to gain insight into the nuances of being a minority child in the specific educational system. Comparisons across the two groups of children suggest that although both groups shared a minority status, they nonetheless experienced marginalisation across different dimensions that were linked to their dual multilayered position as both insiders and outsiders. Attention to such complexities enables us to gain deeper understandings of children’s lives, as too often the category of ‘minority child’ seems to be treated as a monolithic and homogeneous one.     

‘If they don't recognize it,you've got to deal with it yourself’: gender,young caring and educational support

This articles discusses some of the findings of a small‐scale, localized, qualitative study involving children and young people identified and processed as young carers, that are providing ‘substantial care’ for an adult while in primary and/or secondary school. It explores their views on managing to ‘care more’ whilst at school and the role that teachers and schools do and could play in supporting them. The voices of young carers suggest that educational support should be available ‘as soon as’ children become primary carers. The interviewees were critical of the factors that they perceived compromised their ‘performance’ at school. Some implications of these findings for implementing strategies for carers in schools are discussed.     

School Failure in the United Kingdom

This paper comprises five sections. Section 1 is concerned with the aims of education and definitions of pupil success and pupil failure, including criteria for determining success/failure; and section 2 proposes a model of pupil ssuccess/pupil failure which is analysed in terms of (i) ‘within-child’ characteristics and previous learning experiences, (ii) the physical, social and educational environment, and (iii) the extent to which there is a match or mismatch between educational provision and educational needs. The different criteria for measuring success/failure (educational attainment and pupil progress; pupil behaviour; pupils’ self-concepts and expectations of success; attitudes to school; number of pupils assessed as having special educational needs) are identified in section 3, and sources of evidence are analysed. Section 4 traces the legislative basis of educational provision from the 1944 Education Act, through the Education Act of 1988, which introduced the National Curriculum, to the present, while section 5 examines current developments in education.     

READING ATTAINMENT IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS OF BRIGHTON

Children who are ‘at risk’ of educational handicap, or who are likely to show a poor response to the experience of school require special help and care at the earliest opportunity. In order that the educational system can respond positively to the needs of such children, their early identification is a matter of priority. This may be achieved provided ‘risk’ factors in the child's environment have been established through experiment and that their effects, both singly and in combination, on various educational progress measures have been investigated. The present paper discusses the complex relationships observed between a wide range of conditions, personal and environmental, associated with a large group of children at school entry, and the subsequent educational development of these children three years later on. The analysis locates sub‐groups of children who have made a poor response to school and identifies them using different combinations of school entry factors. The analysis also defines a group of children who are on the whole somewhat above average in ability and attainment, but who nevertheless show a deterioration in their school work owing to emotional or social problems. The implication of these findings for the educational system is briefly discussed.     

Speech and language therapy provision for children using augmentative and alternative communication systems

A proportion of children with physical impairments experience significant difficulties in communicating with others and may be recommended augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems such as speech synthesizers and symbol charts to support ‘natural’ communication skills. However, AAC systems are often under-utilized. Parents have identified barriers to AAC system use to include the organization of speech and language therapy. Speech and language therapists are developing services to school-aged children in response to changes in education, health reforms and models of speech and language development. However, there is little evidence for commissioners of children's services about what constitutes ‘enough’ or ‘good’ speech and language therapy. This paper examines speech and language therapy provision to 23 children using AAC systems in six London authorities. Research strategies include documenting the amount, type, organization and objectives of provision. Evidence for collaboration between school staff and therapists is explored, analysis is made of child characteristics associated with provision and criteria for decision-making documented through interviews with therapists. However, little conjunction exists between what therapists said guided their decision-making concerning provision and observed provision. For the children surveyed in this study it seems that that provision in amount of therapy is related to educational placement rather than individual needs.     

Teaching through an ethics of belonging,care and obligation as a critical approach to transforming education

This paper considers the experiences of a New Zealand family and their ‘disabled’ daughter Clare’s ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ in her early childhood centre and the implications of these experiences for shifting from a discourse of ‘inclusion’ to ‘belonging’ based on ‘an ethics of care and obligation to others’. I argue that the meanings and understandings of ‘inclusion’ for disabled children in education are variable and that they often default to dominant deficit discourses whilst believing themselves to be ‘inclusive’. I also argue that we must consciously develop a critical awareness of how exclusionary power operates in society and in our own settings. In this paper, I present ideas drawn from a ‘pedagogy of listening’ and Te Whaariki – The New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum to critically reflect on some of the early childhood education experiences of Clare and her family. I suggest that teachers’ use of critical reflective ‘child’s questions’ can be used as tools for educational transformation towards the full and meaningful participation of disabled children in education.     

Language difference and identity in multicultural classrooms: the views of ‘immigrant‐background’ children in French and English primary schools

This article examines the views of ‘immigrant‐background’ children on their own linguistic and cultural ‘differences’ within the different educational contexts of primary classrooms in France and England. With the increase in and changing composition of immigration in Europe, the integration of populations from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds has become a central issue for European societies. Whilst most studies in France and England tend to focus on immigrant children in secondary schools, this study looks at immigrant children at primary level, in an attempt to ‘hear their voices’ and explore their perceptions and experiences, in a comparative perspective. Findings based on focus group interviews and participant observation in an English and French classroom, suggest that despite contrasting models of integration, the way ‘immigrant‐background’ children mediate ‘difference’ as part of their identities as pupils present similarities between the two countries. There remain, however, strong differences between the two national classrooms, which could be attributed to the different contexts and approaches to multicultural differences in France and England.     

Linking rights,needs, and fairness in high-stakes assessments and examinations

This paper presents a novel explanation for the continued absence of a children’s rights strategy within high-stakes educational assessment with reference to the competing purposes of high-stakes assessments and group-based constructions of fairness in assessment. We provide an original critique of group-based perspectives on the validity of assessment accommodations which supports an individual perspective on fair educational assessment. From this, the (almost forgotten) concept of ‘student assessment needs’ is (re-)introduced as a central axiom, to be constructed through feedback from, and dialogue with, students about their experience of high-stakes assessments, giving primacy to their purpose as an attainment demonstration opportunity for the student. To promote a new movement towards student participation in educational assessment processes and reforms, we propose ‘rights respecting assessment’, complementary to UNICEF’s ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ initiative, in which regular system-wide student representation would contribute to the development of high-stakes examination systems. In recognition of this aspiration, this paper is co-authored with a recent school-leaving age examination candidate.     

Researching children’s rights in education: sociology of childhood encountering educational theory

This paper aims to explore and develop a theoretical approach for children’s rights research in education formed through an encounter between the sociology of childhood and John Dewey’s educational theory. The interest is mainly methodological, in the sense that the primary ambition of the investigation is to suggest a fruitful and useful theoretical base for formulating research problems and undertaking research in children’s rights in education. The paper argues that, particularly in educational settings, research into children’s rights can and must be attributed to children both as full-status humans in a socio-politically contextual present, and as continually growing and changing, immature and dependent humans. From the theoretical encounter suggested in the paper, the much-used distinction of the child as either ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ can be reconsidered, and another point of departure for the study of children’s rights issues in education can be discerned.